Tied Up
by Unusually Cloudy
Summary: Sleep was hard to come by because the dreams kept her up most nights. Vivid, horrible nightmares. Death and sadness, so much red that it seemed like it colored the moon and lit the sky on fire. When she woke up it'd be with the terrible feeling that somehow her nightmares would come true. - SI, twin to canon, no ship currently planned.


**update 8/8/15 - there's always one glaringly obvious typo in the first couple of chapters, isn't there?**

* * *

For what it was worth, she was a very normal child. One of a pair of squalling little babies born to loving but serious people who were eager to start on the journey of parenthood.

The genetics were good too and though she wasn't the same gender as her twin they were both pretty little things, with baby fat and round faces they looked almost identical. Her mother would admit (later on and in journals) to painting one of her nails so that she could tell them apart at first glance until they were old enough to get into proper outfits.

Kaoru was also a happy baby. Easy to please and not too prone to crying unless there were needs her little mind couldn't quite wrap around. Her brother was silent as a stone some days and she would act as the gauge to both of their needs. They didn't seem to do things alone even as infants, they got fed together, slept side to side in the same crib and wanted the same things.

Swaddled in cloth and resting on her mother's lap she'd make eager, grabby hands at her parents.

Her father, his face was full of wonder as he watched his children. He was a hard man by most rights but Mother loved watching his face in those early days.

Kaoru didn't know their names, she didn't care. Her small family and the assortment of same-faced cousins and aunts and uncles – they were the world. The family fed them and clothed them and looked at them as though they were all they could ever want and they were loved from the moment they came into the world.

When her brother had first wrapped his hand around Father's fingers the man had looked so vulnerable. The future of their family, their village, it was all within her brother's little bundle.

Her brother was clan heir, she heard. Words a child doesn't know but she can hear in the way that they speak them that they're important. What is she? She is his sister, she'll be a little bridge they say, a little bride. Their clan has grand plans for both of them but she could hear in her breath and her voice and the way she spoke that all Mother really wanted to see them happy.

So the first year was wonderful as it could be. It was a flash-bang of sensation when they took her outside or introduce her to new people, it left her grasping for everything she can get.

Kaoru wanted a bite of everything, wanted to babble at everyone as her eyesight comes into clearer focus, she wanted to look at everyone and touch their powdered cheeks. She was the _happiest_ baby that most have ever seen, bursting at seams with joy. Even when she pinched at their cheeks with stubby fingers her aunts and uncles laughed and just passed her to the next to see the new children.

Her brother… he's the more serious child. He watched, watched _everything_ with bright black eyes. He had a good disposition though and he was far less demanding than his sister tended to be. Introverted – that's the word. Everyone passed him around the same way but spoke much more quietly, put him down sooner, seemed to understand how long they could coddle him before his face would tighten up in a fuss. They didn't get upset when he just watched and his smiles were more precious than hers because they came less frequently.

His mother and father gave him duties, even as a baby. When he grows he was to watch out for his siblings (they were already sure they wanted more) and to care for his clan.

He was going to be their hope, the one that brings them back into the fold of the village. He was to be a great shinobi. No other options given. He couldn't be a seam maker or a baker, he couldn't be a medic or a civilian of any sort. No, all of his Father's hopes for him rested on being the sort of man whose name was spoken in soft whispers, whose name made men loyal.

* * *

Developmentally, the twins were _fast_. Even for clan children it was odd to have a good grasp of your crawling at five months, but the twins did. The little boy, who Kaoru came to know as Brother, was someone who Kaoru was determined to follow. He got to his knees first, he moved first, but she was on his heels.

When they were crawling they were already large enough to give their mother something of a headache. Kaoru would tear down anything in reach and give shit eating grins in an attempt to get herself out of trouble. Brother would hide in the back corners of whatever room they were allowed into. He'd hide behind book cases and weasel his way into the kitchen cabinets and find the space between the wall and the refrigerator and stay there silently until Mother started to call for him with panic in her voice.

They were much better _infants_ than they were children, Mother had decided. Cleaning up after Kaoru and watching after Brother. It was already getting to be a bit of a mission now that Father had returned to work.

Mother's friends would hold their children close and grin at her, promising that it would get even more interesting when they could walk and run, that the terrible twos were bound to be more interesting when accounting for _twins_.

Father spoke about them with pride in his deep voice but Mother seemed like she was going to have a nervous breakdown any day now.

Not that there was anything funny about driving Mother to the edge, it was just fun to be a child. Somewhere Kaoru knew that time was moving and she was convinced to take the greatest advantage of it that she could.

Brother seemed to be aware of the same thing.

As soon as they had enough dexterity to push themselves onto their knees he was making valiant efforts to walk. Sure, he fell on his ass more often than not while they played in their room but he always got back up and tried again. When Kaoru caught on to what he was doing, she tried the same. Sometimes their stubby fingers would press together and they'd pull at each other in an attempt to get onto their feet.

It was good to be a twin, she'd decided. Brother was a good stick to measure herself by. If she kept up with him then Mother's smiles would be hers too – even if she didn't have the ability to read the bit of nervousness behind Mother's eyes. Kaoru walked the same day Brother walked, even if his steps were a bit more measured and he wasn't as prone to fall as she was, she was faster.

At nine months, they walked, they could feel their small muscles and the extent of them. They became even more of a headache for Mother as their steps got quicker and they felt their innate energy cling to their bones.

Mother's voice had become constant background noise that Kaoru thought she understood but couldn't quite piece together how to respond. Both of the twins first started muttering in baby-talk months prior, shades of words that Mother and Father seemed to say often coming to mind at their little mouths worked frantically in the attempt to converse.

Kaoru's tongue was too large for her little mouth. There wasn't enough dexterity in the muscle – frustrating as that was and she needed as much as she could to wrap around new syllables.

When Father or Mother would guess at what one of the twins was trying to say her little face would screw up as she tried to parse together the right sounds to mean something. Brother didn't seem to have much luck either, but he tried far less often. Kaoru was sure if he'd put as much effort into talking as he did into walking that he'd have gotten there first.

But nah, this one was totally hers.

"Papa!" She'd finally whined as Father tried to change her into a day's outfit while Mother did the same with Brother nearby.

Father went wide eyed. There'd been a great manner of celebration between her parents. Father pulled her close to his chest and she could feel the rumbling as he spoke. He even seemed like he was grinning as he told Mother that Kaoru had managed something close to speech. Given that Father never seemed to have many expressions outside of stern disapproval, it was worth remembering.

The two of them had passed her back and forth like a doll.

"Papa?" Mother would ask, wide smile on her face.

"Papa," Karou would say right back.

"Papa?" Father would ask and he'd repeat it until she said it back to him.

Of course, _they_ were just excited that one of their children had said their first word, Kaoru and Brother had thought the whole exercise was strange.

Mother and Father's excitement didn't seem at all dampened by the twin's looks and they coaxed her into saying her new favorite word as often as they could. Given it was all she could say though, she was more than eager to oblige. Mother was Papa, Father was Papa, everyone in the family who would listen to her for even a moment became Papa. When they were out in the village and she'd toddled over to a shop her family wasn't in, she'd grabbed onto the leg of the nearest stranger and screamed "Papa!" Leaving a very confused chuunin to promise his girlfriend he didn't have a child.

Brother followed soon after because the two of them were inseparable in most ways. His first was complimentary to hers, a squawked "Mama!" when she'd taken too long to come to their crib. Between Kaoru and Brother, the two of them ran around constantly calling to their parents, the next words either of them learned being their sibling's favorite.

"Mama!" "Mama!" "Mama!" would come from their crib at _all_ hours of the night if Kaoru or Brother decided to say it first. Mother was allowed no more rest than her children wanted her to have and the smile she wore seemed to be covering a whole lot of ' _Why_ will you not sleep?' some mornings.

Their growing vocabulary became a hot topic among clan members. Brother learned words faster but she was quicker to understand where one word fit next to the other.

They would be dressed up and paraded out for long meetings where their job was to try and sit quietly – a tradition now that they 'had something to say'. When they inevitably failed at being well behaved Mother would take them to a room with the walls painted colorfully where other children were.

Brother would look at her eagerly and they would toddle over to the group, trying to stack brightly colored blocks and paging through children's books that had only pictures.

That was where Kaoru placed that like she was Kaoru, Brother was 'Chi. Sure, there was _really_ more to his name, but he'd be damned if she could put all of those syllables together. He responded in kind of course. Whenever they were taken apart for longer than they could remember where the other was, Kaoru would shriek out "'Chi!" and 'Chi would respond with "Kao'!" They were banshees when upset and like every woman in the clan when her children were that age, Mother cursed their lung capacity.

Words started to become sentences though, sooner than Mother or Father expected. They heard the word advanced bandied around so often that it started to become an active part of their vocabulary. 'Chi pushed Kaoru into the more "growed up" of the picture books on their shelves and they would start telling each other stories.

Mother took some of the new advancement as bad omens; Kaoru had used her height to put one leg over the side of their crib and dangle until she felt comfortable to plop down, teaching 'Chi to do the same.

* * *

The twos were indeed terrible.

Mother was about on edge as a woman could get when her children decided that playing hide and seek was only fun if they were in the least logical place that they could get.

For what it was worth, Kaoru would swear that Itachi was the one who realized that they could use the small space between buildings to brace their hands and feet on the walls and walk their way up to the balcony of the outbuilding. Kaoru had returned the favor though by announcing that if you got enough of a start off of the balcony, you could hop from the hand rail to the roof of the building close to it.

When Mother had found them they got in so much trouble that going anywhere outside of the house was off limits for a whole week. Father had gotten so mad that he told them to sit in seiza and practice their characters until Mother thought they had progressed enough to move on in her tutoring.

Surely, he'd said, if they had enough energy to give her a heart attack, then they had enough energy to be the very best students they could be. Swinging around from balconies and running between buildings was best left to the shinobi.

Of course that worked two ways. It did make Itachi and Kaoru sit down and go over their characters with their mother, but it also convinced them that when they did become shinobi that they would be allowed to do well, most anything.

Kaoru stood at the hem of her mother's casual yukata, tugging diligently until she looked from where she was cooking. "When we're shinobi can we stay up after ten?"

"When we're shinobi can we eat all the onigiri?" Itachi had thought to ask.

Kaoru jumped up and clung to her twin. "When we're shinobi can we have all the _dango_?"

"When we're shinobi…" "When we're shinobi…" "When we're shinobi…"

There came a moment when their relatively even tempered mother dragged them by the hand to the police force building with her hair pulling out of it's simple bun. It gave her a kind of mad look. She'd been a kunoichi once and a good enough one that even the jounin who she met at the front desk stood down as she pulled her twins toward their father.

With angry black eyes their mother set her hands on her hips and pointed at Father. He looked confused mostly, brows pressed down, but there was just a touch of fear in his eyes and he was a better man for it.

" _Your children_ , have gotten the idea—" Mother stopped mid-sentence, looking down at her little ones. Itachi looked somber, Kaoru had taken after her father and looked the slightest bit afraid… more so when Mother wiped her expression clean of her frazzled anger and smiled down at them, serene as could be. "Alright. Itachi, Kaoru. Papa is going to answer your questions. _Allll_ of them." She smiled so wide her eyes pulled into a squint and let go of the twin's hands.

 _Immediately_ Father found himself with two small toddlers barreling towards him, grabbing at his legs and pushing his chair back and into the wall.

There weren't just questions about shinobi either! No, everything that Mother had ever hushed them about came pouring out of the twins. Even normally reserved Itachi could be coaxed out of his solemn moods by the promise of endless answers and finding out if he could have all of the onigiri he'd like when he became a shinobi.

Father seemed overwhelmed. The two of them combined were an assault on the senses. He had made his mark on the police department by being an impenetrable wall of a man, it was meant to be impossible to get past his defenses.

Really he found himself glad that no enemy had ever thought to utilize the combined power of _toddlers_.

"No you can't eat all the food you like, you'll have to stay at top physical condition. Yes you can stay up as long as you like but you can't sleep late. Yes you'll be allowed to – no, Kaoru, I didn't mean that you can just _not sleep_. Itachi— _Itachi_! I—" Father cut off with a pleading look at Mother. She was leaning against the door way now, cackling quietly into her sleeve with mirth dancing in her eyes.

Point well made.

Not that Father could really think of a point… well, besides maybe not using the promise of future freedom to convince his children to behave. But if a man didn't have 'when you get older!" what else was there?

* * *

Well, there was control.

Father was the family head after all. While most of the clan had thought the incident at the police station was adorable, Mother too in retrospect, Father saw it as an opportunity to start to teach his children what would be expected of them. They were to be well behaved and represent their family the best that they could.

Itachi would one day have the entire family and compound to stand under him, Kaoru would likely be expected to marry into one of the more prominent branches, or into another clan. Through the two of them the Uchiha hoped the bridge the divides that had formed between their own and the rest of the villiage. Not to mention that discipline was important as any other skill to a warrior and Father was sure that his children would be gifted as shinobi.

So the reigns around the house were tightened. Bedtimes came with one story only, the children were moved to separate beds on each side of their small room and getting out of bed meant that they wouldn't be allowed their favorite snacks the next day and would be given something more healthy.

Father's household would be one of _rules_. He'd admit he made a mistake by holding the future privileges over his children, but that was a mistake that they were still young enough for him to fix.

"Resist the urge to move out of seiza. Hold the brush out from your body and pay attention to the strokes of your brush," Father said. Calligraphy was a good skill, Father thought. It demanded attention that people didn't always have and could act a good starting point into fuinjutsu as the twins got older. "We're going to make the word 'Uchiha' and we're not going careful and deliberate with our strokes as not to make any mistake."

His children were in front of him on folded knees, their small desks sat facing his as he watched. The main Uchiha household was a fairly sprawling estate. It was simpler than the Hyuuga not because they didn't have the money for the same extravagance but because they were a streamlined clan. While the architecture was decidedly classic they didn't feel the need for anything they could do without.

They were in a spare room that had been tucked into a quiet corner of the compoud, with tatami flooring and a thin door that lead to the garden which had been pushed back to let in the autumn breeze.

Father knew his children held promise too and that made him even more keen to give them a good shove in the right direction. That they had the patience at all to sit still and focus on something for as long as they had was a good sign of future things.

"Itachi, back straighter. Kaoru, you're holding your brush wrong, keep your wrist stiff and move your arm and your fingers."

"Yes Papa." "Yes Papa!"

Not to mentioned they seem to take to structure like ducks to water. Maybe he'd try and pull Mother into their tutoring more, see if they were at the point that they could start with chakra control exercises soon. If not that, then more book studies.

His house would be a tight ship.

Uchiha didn't aim for mediocrity when they raised their children and anything short of prodigy would be hard pressed to get a proper response from him. It might not have been the best way to treat or approach children, but to Father and to the majority of Konoha, children were just little adults. Children were just people who weren't shinobi yet. If _his_ couldn't deal with this attitude from _him_ then they were certainly not ready to deal with the rest of society.

Their enemies didn't care if the soldiers that were sent against them were basically kids, they cut them down all the same.

* * *

When Kaoru saw a mirror for the first time a pudgy toddler stared back at her. Mirrors weren't common in the Uchiha compound but they'd been taken to the home of one of Mother's friends. Vanity was one of those things that the rest of the family had decided was somewhere close a sin and Kaoru had just never thought about it before.

Yet it wasn't just that there was a _child_ in the mirror, it was… well, was that her? She stopped, turned to look at her brother who was standing on the other side of the room. He wasn't close enough for it to be him staring back at her. Was that _her_? Was that child _her_? With the latest boon in her processing power of her developing mind she finally, properly chimed in:

 _That's not what I look like._

No that was _very certainly_ not the mental image she'd had when she stopped to think of herself. Not that she could properly summon _what_ that mental image had been. Blonde hair? Brown hair? Red? No, no all of her family looked just like she did, why should she be surprised?

There were _a lot_ of days that she and her brother seemed to be the same person, when she came when mother called or him. She'd forget her own autonomy and it often took even longer to remember that there were things like gender and birth order separating them. It shouldn't have been difficult, even in a child's mind.

But that? The girl who stared back at her? She just looked… not like that.

And why was she so _young_? She didn't really have the ability to wrap her head around it at two and three quarters.

No… no, there was something _wrong_ and she didn't know what it was and Itachi was shaking her shoulder but all she could do was stare and stare and wonder if and when something would slot back into the proper place in her mind.

What was it? Why did she _feel_ like she was a girl playing being a boy who'd been born something entirely different. Why did was she sure that—that—

 _Cold_.

She was –

 _So very cold_.

So cold that the world danced below her nerves as her body tried, failed, tried again to fight the desire to scream as she flailed about, helplessly. Her movements made her lose sight of where she'd come from. When she lost sight of where she'd fallen, all was lost.

The pain, the rush of ice water came up to meet her. Tremors and tingles that ran up her arms and back down her frame as her lungs screamed the sky seemed to take on the deep grey of ice covering water, viewed from the wrong side.

Vivid scarlet danced behind her eyelids first, before oxygen deprivation made the world light up in spring-time colors.

* * *

 **a/n: ahhh yeah, another self insert fic. I can hear you're all just so excited.**

 **Things that won't be in this fanfiction: strict adherence to canon, an SI with perfect recall of the series events, an SI who knows all of the abilities off the top of her head.**

 **I love reading self-inserts but I really thought it'd be fun to write one on my own. As it stands I have another chapter written and until the twins are ten properly outlined. This chapter was originally the first and second stuck together but it was getting lengthy.  
**

 **next chapter: coming to and a birthday.**

 **Thank you so much or reading!**


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